The Standard of ‘Civilisation’ Redux: Towards the Expansion of International Society 3.0?

Abstract

This article interrogates the recent return of the discourse of the standard of ‘civilisation’ in international relations. Looking at the expansion of international society as an ongoing civilising project, it examines three important macro societal transformations of the international from a grand historical perspective. The classical civilising project, it argues, gives a particularistic interpretation and a truncated meaning to civilisation in international relations, while creating a pluralistic and functional order populated by Westphalian states. The globalisation of the modern sovereign order in the mid-20th century is equally a civilising project, as it redefines legitimate statehood and rightful membership in the making of a post-colonial international society. The current attempts at embedding democracy and human rights in the normative fabric of global international society, contentious and contested as they are, are an integral story of the expansion of international society 3.0, which is marked by a significantly expanded normative scope for making collective judgements of legitimate statehood and rightful state action. In bringing the expansion story up to date and giving it a hermeneutically different reading, the article suggests that as global international society resides in a multi-civilisational world, the civilising project as a form of inter-civilisational communicative actions will always have its place in the evolution of international society.